


Thirty One

by ianixela



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: AU, Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst but happy ending, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, HEA, Pining, Pregnancy, Reylo - Freeform, Separations, Surprise Baby, Unplanned Pregnancy, Unsafe Sex, i'm trash, montreal fetishizing, overuse of the french language, this is trash i'm sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:41:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23202655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ianixela/pseuds/ianixela
Summary: Ben Solo needs a break from "Kylo Ren", his rockstar alter-ego. The first flight out of Los Angeles takes him...to Canada, where the young woman he meets on an early Summer morning flips his entire life upside down, in the hardest, and ultimately best of ways.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Phasma, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 30
Kudos: 256





	1. July

**Author's Note:**

> So um here we go again with the pain train, choo-choo welcome aboard! 
> 
> Part one hurts the heart and ends with a lot of sad so be warned, but the second kinda makes up for it so...be patient I guess. Unbeta-ed and edited (poorly) by me as usual…
> 
> BTW I'm posting both parts together, just that they needed a break between the two. You can read them continuously or take a break between them its all up to you!
> 
> Warnings for heart wrenching romance, angst, explicit sexual content, language, rock star Kylo Ren/Soft Boi Ben Solo, Rey being too independent, unplanned pregnancy, the profligate use of “cunt” (are y’all surprised?!?!), Hux being a good friend and too wise for his own good, Ben Solo attempting to speak French, way too many mentions of my hometown and other offences. Mind the tags I guess?

Ben meets Rey on a sweltering hot morning in July.

Birds chirping and a hot breeze lifting the hair out of his eyes, forehead already sticky with sweat. He’d gone exploring the city he was vacationing in, taking a break from the tour life, on his own for the first time in ages.

A little more than a month all by himself. 31 days, to celebrate 31 years. 

Granted his birthday had long come and gone, but better late than never. He’d needed it desperately, his voice and heart exhausted. His manager at First Order Records, Snoke, had reluctantly granted him five weeks of rest, along with the three other members of Knights of Ren, who promptly booked it to tropical paradises. 

Ben’s contract was up next year, and maybe his oily, meddling, profit obsessed boss wanted to keep legendary frontman Kylo Ren in his good graces. To be frank, Ben was over it, being the tortured figurehead of a rock band that no one but Snoke wanted to keep going. 

He and his bandmates were writing new things, different things, they wanted out. But there was one year left on the contract, including a tour, and if he wanted to survive it, he needed a break.

He’d booked the first flight out of Los Angeles he’d found.

“Montreal it is, then.” he’d muttered, shouldering the strap of his guitar case and boarding the plane without a backwards glance. Phasma, Hux and Mitaka wanted to tan, he wanted to _live_.

He’d rented a little furnished studio in a city he knew nothing about, and he didn’t care really, he was here to explore, and hopefully he’d manage to find the pieces of himself he’d lost along the way. Maybe.

He turns on a quiet street lined with trees, a café on the corner catching his eye with its huge bay windows and oak shaded terrace, quaint wooden tables and chairs, ivy covered walls.

He could definitely spend a morning reading the news sitting in the shade sipping on iced coffee. That sounds like a dream really.

Inside the café everything is wood and earthy colours, profuse sunlight, a big black board over the bar counter where the drinks and simple menu are neatly printed in white chalk. In French.

There was the catch. Montreal was in French-Canadian territory, and he’d been surprised at how much of the language was present in day to day life. His experience with Canada had been Toronto and Vancouver, resolutely english-speaking. Not that he minded, his mother would be proud of his conversational mastery of the poetic language she had desperately wanted him to pick up in his teen years. 

Rey stands behind the counter, arranging cupcakes on a cake stand with careful movements not to dent the icing.

She’s so beautiful he pauses mid-step, breath short.

Slender, bobbed chestnut hair grazing her jaw and hazel eyes, so pale in the afternoon light. Elfin traits, a delicate pink mouth with a full lower lip, lashes for miles. Freckles.

Dressed simply in a loose white tee, cinched by a black apron.

She looks ethereal, too fresh for this harsh world, like she’s made of wind and sunlight.

Her eyes lift up to where he’s standing and her mouth curls in brief surprise, and then she smiles, just a hint of small teeth, and he feels light headed.

“Bonjour.”

Her voice is breathy soft, a little low, fluted. It matches her looks perfectly. It knocks him out of his contemplation a little too, and he realizes he’s paused mid-step and that it probably looks a little ridiculous and he feels his face heating up.

“Bonjour.” he manages, stepping up to the counter, and her smile widens.

“Que puis-je vous servir aujourd’hui?” she asks, and he’s thankful that she speaks slowly.

His french _is_ conversational but too often has he found himself pleading to his interlocutors to speak slower since he’s arrived. The quick-fire, slang-dotted, accented french spoken there definitely challenged him.

“Um…j’ai-j’aimerais un...un...café glaçé?” he asks, stuttering a little and he really wishes he was more comfortable with the language but her wide smile at his words makes him forget his woes a little.

“Iced coffee?” 

“Yes!” he replies, a little too enthusiastically at her switch to perfect english and she laughs, softly.

“That was nice grade school French, you did great,” she winks, “Yes, we have some. What would you like? Latte? Americano?”

“Americano, with sugar syrup, please?”

She smiles and picks up a tall glass from underneath the counter.

“Sure. Go have a seat, I’ll bring it to you…”

He sits indoors at a window table, his initial plans to sit outside forgotten.

All morning he watches her smile and work, all efficient movements and easy going attitude, and feels his heart lurch when her eyes wander to where he’s sitting. Her beauty makes his head spin.

He almost feels disappointed when he finishes his drink, gets up to pay at the counter and she pushes the bills back in his hands, shaking her head.

“It's on the house.” she says, her cheeks flushing a little, and she chuckles at his puzzled face.

“On the house?” he asks, and she smiles wider.

“The first coffee is free, for new clients. Now you definitely have to come back...” she explains and he feels his face burn.

Actually he feels like he’s consuming himself from head to toe. A man who routinely performs for thousands, rendered useless by a smile. His band would have a field day...

“Thank you, that...that is really kind of you.” he replies, his mouth feeling so dry, but he gathers his courage and offers his hand over the counter, wondering why he feels so damn awkward, “I’m Ben.”

She takes his hand, her fingers slender and cool, and there’s a small symbol tattooed in red on her right pinkie finger. He wonders what it means.

She replies with her name, a little shyly, and he repeats it once, to make sure he pronounces it right and she nods, mouth curled up.

“Rey, like a ray of light…”

“Or a manta ray!” she jokes, laughing.

He lets go of her fingers a little reluctantly.

“See you tomorrow?” he asks, and she nods again.

“Sure. Come by.”

The next morning he comes in bright and early, and her smile is warmer than the sun.

He sits at the bar rather than at a table, just to be closer, and he feels like he’ll never stop blushing when her luminous gaze lands on him. It's a good feeling.

* * *

Rey owns the café he finds out.

She’s owned it for five years, and business is good, she has three employees; Finn, Rose and Poe, that end up knowing him on a first name basis in the first week. Because no matter how hard he tries thinking of other places to drink coffee, he ends up there every morning, sitting at the bar and watching her work her magic.

He doesn’t really want to go anywhere else really.

She talks to him about her life, and how she studied computer analytics but never quite found work in the field and ended up buying the place from her foster mother Maz when she retired, and throwing herself blindly in the business only to have it become successful overnight. She tells him about coffee, the differences between kenyan and ethiopian, and the superiority of italian machines, and he soaks it all up, fascinated.

In exchange he tells her about Los Angeles, and his family, and rather personal things no one has ever known, stuff he doesn’t even tell his bandmates. Stuff the media would kill to find out. He tells her about the tour life and how he needed a break from it all. He even catches himself showing her music videos of the Knights on his phone and she stares eyes wide at the screen, her mouth opening in awe.

“But…but you’re amazing!” she exclaims, loud enough for patrons to turn around and look at them curiously and she covers her mouth with both hands in a way far too endearing, reminding him that she’s a young woman in her early twenties.

Age is but a number, he tells himself. Over and over again, lying down in his bed at the studio and thinking of her perfect face.

She works every morning until three in the afternoon, and her weekends are free. He finds out when out of the blue she invites him for dinner on a Friday night.

“I don’t work in the morning, we could go eat together?” she asks, cheeks adorably rosy and his heart leaps.

He’d been wondering how to ask her out, rolling the words in his mind over and over again and he’s so excited that she’s the one to actually invite him that he trips over his own words agreeing.

She writes her number and her address on the back of a business card in purple pen, round, girly cursive.

“Meet me there for seven?” she asks, “It's really close to here, a little down the street.”

“Yes, I will be there.” he replies with a smile that nearly hurts his cheeks.

He gets to the address at seven on the dot, after changing twice and mussing his too long ebony brown hair frustratedly for ten minutes and giving up when it refuses to behave. Montreal is hot and humid this time of year, and his hair curls at the ends, waving in the hot breeze.

She gets to the door, and for the first time they stand facing each other without a solid oak counter between them and he realizes she’s a quite a few inches shorter than he is. She’d looked taller across the counter, but he likes that she’s just that little bit shorter, that he has to look down to meet her eyes.

She wears a black slip dress and a silver pendant falling down the open neckline. He wonders what it is but he’d have to look a little far down to see it and he doesn’t think that’s too appropriate for a first date.

He realizes this is actually a date and the butterflies in his stomach come to life. Again.

He can’t remember the last time he’s been on a date, it's been ages. No time, no inclination. No one wanting to date Ben Solo. Plenty wanted to fuck Kylo Ren though. It made dating difficult.

But this, here. It’s different.

The dying sunlight outside turns her eyes to gold and he feels completely breathless.

She looks equally flustered and it makes him feel a little better. He’s not the only one going a little crazy, it's reassuring.

“Are you ready?” he asks, and she comes back to her senses, nods and locks the door behind herself.

He guides her arm around his and smiles when she chuckles softly at the gesture, leaning a little against him, and they walk shoulder to shoulder down the street.

They go to a bistro where she seems to know everyone, and they look at him with curious, amused smiles and she blushes a lot when she gets asked by the waiter if he’s her new boyfriend.

He thinks that maybe he’d like to be, before remembering that he leaves in a month and yet he feels like he’s set things in motion between them that he won’t be able to stop or control. The thought scares and thrills him all at once. He tells himself that if she wants to kiss him at the end of the night that he won’t stop her.

Not like he would be able to stop himself anyway.

She orders for them both, self-assuredly, and when the wine arrives she touches her condensation-frosted glass to his.

“To your vacation.”

Their glasses clink softly and her sweet smile makes him drink that first sip a little faster than he should.

They’ve drunk the entire bottle before the food arrives, the wine loosening their tongues and when their dishes get to the table they order another. They talk all evening, and he notices every quirk of her lips and how the wine flushes her cheeks and the quiet pleasure in the depths of her eyes. How she runs fingers through her short hair when she’s flustered, tousling it further.

She orders them dessert, one to share for the sake of gluttony, and while they wait he takes her hand in his, emboldened by the wine, and she lets him, cheeks flushed. Her nails are painted a deep red, black cherry, and he traces the red symbol on her finger, carefully.

His hands are so big holding hers, dwarfing them completely.

“That little sign?” he asks, tracing the thin lines, “What does it mean?”

“Oh, the tattoo? It's the alchemical symbol for quicksilver.”

He wonders what quicksilver might be and his puzzlement probably shows on his face because she chuckles, tangles her small fingers with his.

“Metal that is liquid at room temperature…you know, mercury, like the stuff in thermometers.”

He remembers the glass tube filled with silver from his childhood, and some high school science experiments.

“Oh! I see…but why?”

Her thumb caresses his knuckle, slow circles.

“It represents feminine power, the moon…when I had it done, it was at a time when I needed to be reminded of who I was.”

He wants to tell her how it fits her perfectly but they’re interrupted by the arrival of dessert, hazelnut-chocolate cake, and they pull apart a little too quickly like teenagers caught holding hands and he tries very hard not to blush when the waiter gives them an amused look. She squeezes his ankle between hers underneath the table instead, eyes glowing.

The walk back to the apartment is quiet, slow. He doesn’t want it to end, feeling deliciously light headed and young and like the world is all his, holding her small hand in his.

They get to her apartment door all too soon, stepping up to the porch and she takes the keys out of her small purse, looking lost in thought for a second as she unlocks the door. He’s about to say something when she turns on her heel to face him, a little quickly, like she’s made a decision. There’s determination in her eyes and the cant of her mouth when she puts her hands on his shoulders and steps closer.

The moonlight tips her hair and lashes with silver, her body close enough to his to feel heat and racing heartbeat.

The butterflies, wine dulled, come back to life instantly, bubbling up in his stomach.

“I really, really, want to kiss you right now.” she says, softly, and his breath hitches.

“Oh… _oh_!” he replies, flustered, elated and reckless all at once, “I…I don’t want to stop you.”

“Good.” she replies, leaning closer, getting on the tip of her toes and her fingers on his face and she’s close enough for him to count her lashes and freckles.

Their lips touch and it feels like an electric current went right through him, all of his nerve endings firing up and he wraps his arms around her waist, holding her closer. She’s so delicate he feels like he could break her but she tangles fingers in the hair at his nape and her lips part easily, her kiss devouring him.

She tastes like the chocolate they had for dessert, and her mouth turns pliant and soft when his hands rake down her back, splay on the birth of her spine and her hips arch up against him, pressed so close and he thinks he got too carried away when she pulls back, flushed and flustered and he’s about to apologize when she speaks.

“Let's get in…” she whispers, reaching back for the door handle with one hand and the open collar of his dark henley with the other.

Days of what-ifs coalescing into desire and certainty when they stumble pass the threshold, her hands in his collar pulling him close again as the door slams shut behind them. He lifts her against his chest and presses her blindly against the wall, mouth opening on her throat and the struggle becomes more intimate, bodies aligning to rub and thrust through layers of clothing. He wants more, he wants to get to skin, holding her up with his hips while his hands push down the thin straps of her dress, filmy fabric falling down her shoulders.

She’s naked underneath, the raw silk falling off her bare chest. The pendant between her breasts is a round citrine set in silver, matching her skin with its pale gold brightness, he notices briefly, before hitching her higher to reach a dusky nipple with his lips.

Sucking and kissing until it buds underneath his insistent tongue.

Her eyes are fever-bright when he pulls away.

“Do you want to…” he starts, interrupted by her mouth on his, “The bedroom…”

“No…not yet. Take me here…right here.” she pleads and he groans low in his throat, fits a hand between their bodies to get to the fly of his jeans.

Struggling with button and zipper one handed, tugging down at his unbearably tight boxers.

“We need…I’m not on birth control…” she mumbles against his hair and he reaches in his back pocket where he’d shoved a condom earlier, thinking himself overconfident.

“I have one…” he replies and she laughs, low in her throat, breathless, kissing his forehead.

“You were planning all this?” she asks teasingly and he’s too flustered to agree or deny it, pinning her again with his hips while he tears at the foil packaging.

Her dress is pooled at her hips and it's hard to focus with all that skin in front of his eyes and he struggles with the condom, only managing when she hoists her thigh above his hip. Rock hard and leaking and he wants her more than he wants to breathe, pushing hands up her thighs underneath the dress, tugging her underwear to the side. Too eager to take it off, fingers sliding inside heat, slickness and he groans.

“Take me…please…”

Ben stops breathing when he sinks into her, her cunt so tight and hot.

There’s a long pause where they are both shuddering and panting into each other’s mouths as they kiss, trying to get grounded and failing because it's too much.

Too much heat, sensation and he ruts up into her completely overwhelmed, her hands clawing at his back and breath burning the side of his face.

It's over too soon, too eager and she feels too perfect in his arms, he can’t hold it or stop it when his orgasm roars through him, jarring his bones with the force of it.

They sink bonelessly to the floor in a tangle of legs and arms and she gasps a little when he pulls out and spreads her out on the hardwood, hoisting her thigh over his shoulder after tugging her underwear properly off.

“I need to make you come...Fuck, Rey...” he murmurs against the soft skin inside her tan thigh and she shivers, tangling both hands in his hair.

“Oh please…please… _Ben_ …”

The way she whimpers his name makes his cock stir against his thigh again.

He can wait.

He can definitely wait, pressing his mouth to her swollen flesh, lips wrapping tight around her delicate clit like he wants to eat her alive.

The way she cries out his name when she comes is a thing of beauty he needs more of.

* * *

She smiles up at him, tucked against his side and his knee wedged between her thighs.

It's almost noon, sun bright through the white curtain and the light curls over her skin in stripes. The both of them completely naked and warm and perfectly slotted together in the soft white sheets of her bed.

He didn’t go back home the night before. He made love to her until dawn and learned every curve, every dip of muscle, the texture of her sensitive flesh. The taste of her skin, he’s learned it by heart, musky sweet, and it's become deliciously addictive.

She caresses his neck, small hand folding over the curve, presses her pointy nose to his.

“You’re beautiful.” she murmurs, and his mouth curls up, “I love that dimple in your cheek when you smile, too…” she adds, sweetly.

“What else do you like?” he asks, smitten, and she smirks, eyes closing a little.

“I like your nose, it's a really regal nose you know? And your ears…” she murmurs, crawling on top of him and straddling his thighs.

He wraps both hands around her waist, cups her ribcage, her heart racing through his palms when he gently caresses the underside of her breasts with his thumbs.

She leans low to kiss his lips, and then she keeps kissing down, tracing the curve of his adam’s apple.

“I like your neck, and your shoulders…you’re so buff, it's like you could break me in half.”

“I would never…”

“I know. You’d never hurt me unless I wanted, I know that…I love that you make me feel so small and fragile…” she whispers against his collarbone, kissing down the valley of his chest.

Her tongue flattens on his nipple and his hips surge up in response, cock hard and trapped against her belly and he finds himself desiring her again. Despite the fact that he’s had her all night, he wonders what it is in her that made him so insatiable.

“Come live with me.” she asks, quietly against his skin and he buries fingers in her soft hair.

“Okay.” he replies softly, because he does want it, he wants to be with her as much as he can get away with.

Her mouth leaves moist trails down his toned belly, cool hands tracing his ribs and hips and then her head dips down between his thighs.

He sits up a little to see better, her mouth on him, engulfing him in wet heat and his hand folds over the nape of her neck.

Her eyes when she looks up at him, mouthing the underside of his cock, are incandescent.

* * *

Time is precious, easily wasted. Too precious to be spent thinking too much.

So he falls in love.

Completely and utterly, falling head first in it, throwing all caution to the wind.

He wants to spend every minute of every day with her, and he does. She takes her first vacation in years, leaving the coffee shop in the hands of Finn, her assistant manager, and he moves into her apartment. One suitcase and one guitar, finding their space in her bedroom.

It's almost frightening how easily he falls into her routine, how the apartment becomes his own. How their intimacy buds overnight, the touches, the kisses, the sweet words. How their bodies fit together like they’ve been made to be fused together.

He makes love to her relentlessly, spontaneously and he’s never had that much fulfilling sex in his whole life. He remembers being told that emotionally connected sex is so much more satisfying than fucking for the sake of it and he’d scoffed, too young to understand the truth of the words.

Kylo Ren did plenty of no strings attached fucking, but this, this was all Ben and it was perfect.

He understands the wise words now and it's dizzying how fast he’s fallen in love but there’s no way out of this. It's too late. It was too late the morning he stepped into the coffee shop and met her hazel gaze with his own.

So he lets himself freefall, heedless of the consequences.

He cooks her dinner and watches movies curled up with her on the couch, hands sneaking underneath her clothes.

Washes her back in the shower and they take long baths too, talking and dozing off until the water runs cold and their toes wrinkled.

Wakes up in her bed, her lean naked body draped over his back, sunlight kissing his skin.

They don’t make plans, sleep for hours, kiss endlessly, lay out on the grass in her fenced backyard. They take her small car through the countryside and she lets him drive through the hills with all the windows down, breathing in the summer air, holding his free hand in her lap.

He sings his heart out until his throat is hoarse and he can’t anymore at a little karaoke bar with the café’s staff one night, drinks until his eyes are full of stars and his head spins and the sex on the living room couch is sloppy and perfect.

They spend three days at a lake house with no electricity, no phone signal. Nothing but the whisper of leaves and a curtain of fog at five in the morning on a deserted lake.

Jumping naked in cool water.

He hasn’t done that in forever.

He’s never made love to a woman on blankets outside by a campfire but he makes up for lost time and her skin kissed by the gold of the flames is a thing of beauty.

“I’m very fond of you… _terribly_ fond.” Rey whispers against his neck in the aftermath, sweaty slick and licked by the heat of the embers.

His heart soars painfully high in his chest.

“I am too…” he whispers back and she pulls him closer, drapes a bare leg over his hip, the intimacy of their bodies delicious.

“What will I do when you leave?” she asks, and the voice is less than a whisper, a terrified murmur.

“Don’t speak of it…don’t think about it.”

“I can’t stop. I dread the mornings that I’ll wake and you won’t be there…This is a dream and I don’t want to wake up.”

He hushes her with a kiss.

“We still have a week. A whole week…just you and me.”

A week is so quickly gone.

* * *

“Hux, I’m in love.”

His bassist, bandmate, and oldest friend chokes at the other end of the line.

“ _WHAT!?”_

“I met this girl here in Montreal, she’s...she’s everything I ever wanted and I’m head over heels. What the fuck do I do?”

Hux is remarkably speechless.

“ _Well...wow! I’ve heard that Montreal girls were next level but this is unexpected. I don’t know what to tell you, Ben. You know what our schedule is like, dating is just...impossible. And even if it was, you know Snoke, he’d personally make your life hell for it.”_

Hux knows this better than most. He and Phasma, the lead guitarist, have been dating for months and hiding it from management. It's against their contract.

“I just...I want to be with her.”

“ _Ben, you have a year left on that contract. We all know we’re calling it quits after the last tour. Wait it out. Tell her you love her…”_

“It wouldn’t be fair to keep her waiting. And I’ve never been good at the long distance thing, not with Snoke breathing down my neck…”

Hux’s voice is sad and resigned at the other end of the line.

_“Make the most of the time you have left with her, Ben. I’ll be here when you come back.”_

* * *

“I love you. I love you so much…” he murmurs in her neck, hips steady between her thighs, clinging to her like his life depends on it.

There’s scarcely an inch between their bodies that isn’t touching. He wants to melt down inside her and stay there.

He wants to stay here forever, with her, in that sunny apartment, in this beautiful city where he feels at home, sit at the counter at the coffee shop and watch her work her magic.

He wants to sing for her in those grey hours between night and morning. He wants to write a million songs, and record them in her bathroom where the acoustics are ridiculously good.

But Snoke had called, summoning him back. Seeing that name appear on his phone had made him sick.

His flight leaves in five hours.

They’ve both been crying all night, his eyes burning and his mouth parched. He feels like he’s cried all the tears in his body and he feels exhausted, like he wants to sleep for days and maybe never wake up from this.

She clings to him, legs and arms tight around his body and moans hoarsely when his hips push up, finding that spot inside her that makes her fall apart.

“I love you too…I love you.” she pants against his ear, breathing desperately, “Don’t go…please don’t go…oh _god_.”

The last thing he wants to do is leave her.

She comes quietly, holding him tight and the steady pulses of her cunt around him trigger his own orgasm. He takes her face in his hands, kisses her eyelids and her nose, her lips.

He moans softly into her mouth as he reaches his completion.

“I don’t want to leave…” he whispers against her mouth, breathing her in and he wishes someone had told him that a heart breaking is the worst thing a man could possibly endure.

Not just his own heart but the heart _he_ breaks too. Her young, delicate heart.

In the shower he touches every inch of her, imprints her skin with his fingertips, wanting to remember it perfectly. Bites the curve of her neck, hard, working the flesh between his teeth, wanting it to bruise, hurt, so she’ll remember him and his touch for as long as it stays and she welcomes it, pulling him close.

“Yes... _yes_ Ben…make me yours…”

There’s a thread of desperation in her voice that makes him leave a second mark, lower, on her chest over her heart.

She drapes her citrine necklace around his neck, standing in her entrance hall, his suitcase by the door. He just called the cab that takes him to the airport. They have fifteen minutes.

Fifteen minutes to say things that cannot be expressed in words.

He runs fingers on the skin warmed chain around his neck.

“You have to take a bit of the sun with you…” she murmurs, arranging the pendant inside the collar of his tee so it lands on his chest.

She looks so brittle, eyes dead and it breaks him.

“I want to take all of you with me…” he replies, guiding her hands up to his shoulders and pushing her against the wall.

The wall against which he’d taken her the first night, before she crashed head first into his life and flipped everything around and made him fall in love for the first time.

And probably love for the last time. He doesn’t think he can love like this again.

They make love again desperately, but most of all recklessly.

Her thighs over his hips and her cream silk robe falling open down her arms, mouth open, lips swollen and pleading, begging and he slows down, counts the breaths and heartbeats because he wants to remember this, sear it in his mind.

It's the last time he gets to touch her to the core like this, that he can be fused to her and forget his own body, losing himself in her.

“I love you. I _love_ you…” is a breathy litany in his ear as he spills his pleasure, deep inside her, and he feels even more broken, tears spilling out of his eyes through the haze of his ecstasy.

He pulls away feeling like he’s been torn apart, their last kiss urgent.

He can taste the desperation in it and it makes him go for more, more teeth, more tongue, clinging to her all the way to the door and the cab waiting on the curb.

“I love you. Please remember it…when you feel lonely, think of our love.” he whispers in her hair and she nods, swallowing a small, broken sound.

“I love you Ben Solo. I didn’t want to wake up from that dream…” she whispers, voice thick, and he wipes the tears underneath her doe eyes with his thumb.

“I know.”

There are no questions when he arrives at the studio in Hollywood, early morning the next day, collapses in Hux’s arms and cries all the tears in his body.

They all know about the love he left behind and there are no words to soothe that kind of hurt.

* * *

Rey dials his number ten times.

Dials and erases, dials and erases, heart leaping in her chest.

It's winter in Montreal now, snow piling up on the windowsill and the terrace long gone. She sits in a corner of the quiet coffee shop and her hot chocolate has had the time to cool while she was having her internal dilemma.

Rey thinks of his rock star life, the hectic schedule he has to stick to. She follows his band’s accomplishments online and catches herself swelling with pride every time they release a new song, when their latest album gets high on the charts. Her heart aching at his little smile for the camera at award shows, on red carpets where he strolls dressed to the nines, looking appropriately sullen, a pretty starlet or budding model on his arm. This is the star that he hid within himself while he was with her. It's another facet of him entirely, and she wonders if Kylo Ren remembers her too.

A simpler time when he was Ben Solo, when they were together and deliriously happy, living a waking dream.

She dials again.

Erases again.

Puts down the phone with a sigh, leaning back against the chair to stretch her spine and the five month old baby in her belly flutters.

She puts her hand on the swell of it distending her black dress and wonders if they'll have his dimpled smile too.

It's better if he doesn’t know, she tells herself, turning off her phone, heart shattered.

What they had was all a dream.

She doesn’t try calling him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry omg, this sucks but go read part two to make it better <3


	2. September

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here’s part deux to take away the sad...sorry o_O

It takes a little more than a year for Ben to be free.

September, the air outside still sweltering in South Korea where he finished his final tour with the Knights of Ren. Kylo Ren and the knights have been put to rest, and he and the band are taking a break before their new project. Something that will be really theirs. 

Now that it's all over, all he thinks about is gold skin and hazel eyes, touching the citrine pendant hanging against his chest.

He hasn’t taken it off since she’s laid it there with trembling hands, in the minutes before they parted.

It's the memory of their last desperate embrace that keeps him going at times. It's all he thinks about when he lays in bed and feels his heart swell and ache, too big for his ribcage to contain.

There’s the guilt too, the weight of it on his shoulders.

He hasn’t called her since he left.

Coming back to Los Angeles too heartbroken, and then the usual pattern of touring rolled in, filled schedules, rehearsals, hours of practice, leaving him too exhausted to deal with the mess of his heart.

It's a guilt that eats at him, consumes him, until he feels like a piece of himself is missing.

He tried finding that missing piece in his work, in other girls when he could spare the time. Lean, tan skinned girls with hazel eyes.

But they aren’t _her_. It's not her hands, her lips, her sultry voice.

It's her he needs.

The need becoming a constant in his mind.

He hasn’t called her, not once, but underneath his bed is a pile of passionate love letters he’s written her. Poems. Odes to her body, her skin, the endless depths of her eyes.

Sealed and dated, envelopes of all shapes and sizes.

Just like calling, he can’t bring himself to send them, laying himself bare when he feels more brittle than glass and it eats at him, watching the pile grow and grow.

“I think you should call her.” Hux tells him out of the blue one morning, when he’s sitting at the hotel’s café, staring into the inky depths of his coffee.

“What?” he asks, confused, looking up and Hux sighs, sits across from him with his own coffee, laden with cream and sugar.

“I think that you should call her, now that you have the time. We are done with all this, Snoke doesn’t own us anymore…you could go see her.”

His heart races at the thought.

“It's been more than a year Hux…and I’ve been…I have been so…”

“Neglectful?” Hux provides, a hint of acidity in his fluted tone.

He thought Ben a coward for giving up on his love so easily, when he and Phasma had to hide theirs for years. Never voiced it and he never would either, but Ben could feel it, the disappointment.

Hux has always been a romantic at heart.

“Yes, neglectful. She’s probably moved on…”

Just saying the words hurt, fist clenching underneath the table at the thought of her touched by another.

Would they be as gentle as he was? Would they see her body arched up in pleasure like he had, sunlight on her gold skin and her eyes like amber.

He’s jealous despite the fact that he’s done nothing to keep her.

Hux sighs, leans back against his chair, and in the morning light there are lines at the corners of his eyes that weren’t there last year.

He’s aging beautifully. They’re all a little lucky that way, aging prettily. There are lines around his eyes too, faint ones, from frowning so much. They are young still, they have a few more years ahead of them, but the touring band life was a hard one and just yesterday he saw Mitaka pluck a silver hair out of the ebony mass falling across his eyes with a wince.

They are still young but he wonders if it's worth wasting time pining after someone he loves from afar instead of taking the jump.

“She loved you. You loved…still love her. At least call her.” Hux says, with a kind of sharp finality that makes it sound like an order, “Life is too short Ben. Too short for you to miss out like this.”

Life is  _ too _ short.

Hux had realized this two years ago, when the woman he’d loved for years had finally returned his feelings, finding it in himself not to care that they were both in a band together with expectations to meet and prohibitive contracts.

He’d told himself that life is too short and had kissed Phasma back in the back of the tour bus.

Ben knows that Hux knows better than anyone.

Life is way too short to spend it loving someone without having them and the realization crushes him and for a second he can’t breathe, has to blink the stars out of his eyes.

Stars, tears, same difference, but he still feels the urge to quell that shaky breath that filters past his lips.

Hux squeezes his shoulder on his way out, softly.

An eternity passes, the light shifts on the table and his breath finally calms.

He picks up his phone on the table, checks the time and wonders if she’ll be sleeping already as he dials the number.

From memory. He’s looked at it saved in his phone too many times to count.

His heart in his throat when the call connects and he’s already preparing his words, lips burning with the desire to spill everything he’s ever felt to her ear.

There's a dial tone and then her cheery voice on the answering machine.

It hasn’t changed, it still makes his heart race, his head swim, and he can hardly contain himself, sweat breaking down his back.

The dial tone comes again and then silence and he realizes that he has to say something and for a second all the words that he was mulling around in his head disappear.

He breathes out the first thing that comes to mind.

“I miss you…oh god. Rey, I miss you so much I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…” he spills and he gets choked up, his throat tightening.

The seconds it takes for him to get his breathing under control feel like hours.

“I’m so sorry, for not calling you sooner, for everything. I love you. If you want I…” he starts, hesitates, “I will be in Montreal. I…” his mind goes a thousand miles a minute, trying to form sentences that make sense despite the maelstrom of his mind, “I will be there as soon as I can, and I want to see you, if you want. I still love you, I have been thinking about you all this time and my feelings for you are the same they were when I left. If you feel the same way…I would like to see you. Je t'aime.”

He hangs up before his breathing gets out of control again, and it takes him a minute to get his mind back in order, elbows on the table, rubbing his face with his hands. He wills himself back to calm but his hands shake a little when he takes a sip of cold coffee and gets up, runs a hand through his overgrown ebony hair. Pulls the laptop on the table closer to him.

He books the first direct flight he can find and for the first time in a year he feels like he can breathe fully.

There are uncertainties, possible failures in his hasty plan. Things could go wrong, maybe she has moved on, maybe her heart belongs to someone else, but then he’ll know.

He breathes, deep and long, presses his palm to the citrine on his heart.

He breathes.

* * *

Halfway across the world a phone rings softly on a bedside table, in a white apartment with big windows.

But it's night time, the moon shining bright through the transparent curtains, the window open to let in the cool breeze.

The room has changed a little, in a corner that was once empty sits a rocking chair, painted white.

And in the apartment, the once unused room now has buttercup yellow walls, and a pale cradle, a bookcase lined up with wooden toys.

The phone rings but the woman on the bed lets it, half reclined on stacked pillows.

Her hair has grown longer, falling across hazel eyes that have a few more creases at the corners, her softly curved upper lip dotted with the summer’s freckles.

Her hands, arms, are too busy to pick up the phone, cradling a four month old baby boy while he drinks his fill.

Born on the very last day of April, a week early, making her break water behind the counter of the homey coffee shop she’s owned for years. Just before the morning rush, sneakers soaked and breath short and more excitement than she could fathom.

A little boy, in such a hurry to meet the world that he emerged squirming and yelling in the hospital’s parking lot, in the back of Finn’s car.

A little boy with pale skin and wispy black curls, the smallest of fingers. Delicately prominent ears, deep set eyes that are a deep brown in the dark, but hazel just like hers in the sun.

She thinks that his smile will look just like his father’s, plush-lipped and and dimpled, and it fills her with a mixture of joy and heartache.

She thinks of Ben every single day.

She thinks of French stutters and whispered endearments, of long-lashed whiskey eyes and the fullest mouth she’s ever kissed. Of large hands that made her feel loved and whole, a body that showed her true pleasure, made her feel safe with its strength.

Of nights entangled together in her bed where she now lays with the son he made her.

The son she kept to herself.

It's all she has left of that idyll and sometimes she has to remind herself not to be greedy, not to wish for the man too when he’s gifted her with such a gorgeous son. Not wishing for things she cannot have when she already has so much.

Sometimes she questions the rightfulness of her actions, if she should’ve told him that across the world there’s a growing little boy with his heritage splashed across his features.

The rationale never changes: He would never have the time for a baby, she tells herself, better if he doesn’t know.

She waits for the baby to fall asleep, lays his lax body beside hers on the white comforter, gently caresses the wisps of black hair curling on his forehead before reaching for the phone on the table.

Halfway across the world a woman’s heart stops when she sees the familiar name on her screen.

* * *

He struggles to sleep on the flight, fitfully turning left and right.

The flight attendant brings him an extra blanket and chamomile tea that tastes more like water than anything else but he struggles.

He’s afraid.

Afraid he’s making a mistake, afraid that the decision was too rash.

But there’s the message too, the one she left on his answering machine when she called back and he was sleeping.

“ _ I have…Ben, I have things to tell you. Many things. _ ”

She’d sounded excited, and a little afraid, that tightness to her voice sending his stomach into coils.

He caves and takes one of the sleeping pills his doctor prescribed him the year before. When he’d slept off his heartbreak.

Sleep swallows him until landing, the tremors of the plane and the soothing voice of the attendant, shaking him awake gently.

He’s booked a room in a modern hotel close to her coffee shop, in her neighbourhood lined with parks, bordered by the river. Ben listens to the chatty cab driver as he weaves through early morning traffic and he feels like he could sleep for another day. A whole twenty-four hours and he does, hangs up that little “do not disturb” placard on the door handle and crashes into bed naked and damp from an hour-long shower. Sleeps until noon the next day.

It rains when he wakes. Not twenty-four but eighteen hours later, good enough.

Thick sheets of autumn rain that speckle the glass panels that flank his room and fogs the entire city, and from his window the street down below is a forest of umbrellas.

His phone rings, softly, muted from underneath the pillow where he’s left it the day before. Her name on the screen and his heart flips in his throat.

“Hello?” he replies, softly, releases a long pent up breath when it's her voice at the other end, low and soft and gloriously familiar.

“ _ I missed your voice. _ ” she murmurs, and it hits home, how much he’s missed her voice too.

“I missed yours too. I’ve missed you. Terribly.”

There’s bated silence thick enough to touch and it's full of anticipation and promise.

“ _ When did you land? _ ”

“Yesterday morning. I’ve slept through the day and night too. I miss you. I want to hold you.” he whispers, throat tight and there’s a muted sigh at the other end of the line.

“ _ I want to see you too. I want to see you so much but first there’s something I need to tell you, something important. _ ”

Ben feels his spine tense at the words, fingers tightening on the handle of his half full coffee cup.

He’d expected this, and he’s made scenarios in his head, of all the things that could go wrong, in excruciating detail.

“ _ Ben, I had a baby. _ ”

The cup shatters on the floor when it falls from his nerveless fingers, splattering lukewarm coffee up his ankles.

A baby.

That hadn’t been in the scenarios he’d made up and he almost feels silly for  _ not _ including it. His throat feels so dry he can hardly make a sound when he replies, head swimming.

“How…I mean…” he runs fingers across his eyes, shocked, “When?”

“ _ He was born in April. A week early. _ ” she murmurs, “ _ He’ll be five months old at the end of September. _ ”

His mind does the math faster than humanly possible, counting the months, realization falling over him like a cloak.

He remembers the sex they had just before he left, in lush detail.

Up against the wall, her heels pressing the curve of his ass, thighs around his waist, all mouth and skin and the kind of desperate passion that isn’t paused, cannot be stopped.

He remembers the taste of her kisses and his face burns.

“You had  _ my _ baby.”

There’s a short pause and he feels like he’s about to fall.

“ _ Yes. Our baby, Ben _ .”

He feels the blood drain from his face, hands, pooling in his legs and he thinks he would probably faint if he hadn’t been sitting down already.

He’s been a father all this time. And if he’d been man enough to pick up the phone after disappearing from her life he’d know already.

He could have been there for her.

But he wasn’t.

There’s a baby in this city that he’s helped create and no matter how real it feels he still can’t wrap his mind around the idea.

“ _ Ben? Are you still with me? _ ”

He shakes himself, his spine alive with shudders and tries to will the clamminess of his hands to disappear.

“Yes…”

“ _ Ben, I want to explain this to you. There’s so much I need to explain. _ ”

“I need to think…I don’t know. I just…”

“ _ Ben… _ ”

There’s an urgency to her voice that makes his heart shatter but he can’t be in his own body, in his mind right now. He needs out.

“Give me a day.” he pleads.

There’s a silence, a heavy one.

“ _ Yes. Of course…I’m sorry for springing that on you. _ ” she murmurs, “ _ I love you _ .”

There’s the dial tone before he can reply with anything, but it's better that way because he has no idea what to say.

There are no words.

* * *

He wanders the city, surprised at how familiar it still feels.

Watches people and buildings underneath the hem of his black umbrella, bought from the hotel’s gift shop. There’s no aim to his wandering, turning on streets out of whim until he finds a little pastry shop that sells pastel macarons and bitter coffee. He’s not hungry but eats all six he buys and feels rather silly.

The sugar makes him feel a little queasy but he’s reminded that he’s still alive, that this isn’t a dream.

That he’s halfway across the continent from home in a city where there’s a woman he loves desperately and a baby he made with her and he has to sit down on a bench in a park underneath an oak tree.

How does one even deal with this?

He calls Hux, knowing that he’s still in Korea and that it's the middle of the night but that his friend will answer, and he does, after five rings.

“ _ Ben? _ ”

Hux’s voice is thick and soft with sleep and Ben feels a fraction of discomfort at waking him like this but he has to talk to somebody.

Somebody who will know what to say and Hux always knows. He’s known him for so long, he will know what to say to help him make sense of the jumble of feelings raging through him.

“She had a baby.”

There’s a long pause at the other end.

“ _ She what? _ ”

“She had a baby last April.”

“ _ Ben… _ ”

There’s an apologetic tone to his voice and Ben realizes that Hux is misunderstanding.

“Hux. Armie Hux that baby is mine. She had my baby, a little boy. I have a son.”

There’s a pause and a sharp inhale.

“ _ Oh. Oh god. _ ”

“Hux…”

“ _ Give me a minute… _ ”

There’s a rustle of sheets and the click of a light being turned on and a groan, a soothing murmur from Hux and the soft sound of a kiss. Phasma, such a deep sleeper she’ll fall right back to sleep. Echoes of intimacy and Hux’s voice in the receiver again, more awake but still tired.

“ _ I think I need some kind of explanation. _ ”

He has so many things to say and it comes all at once to his lips in a jumble of words.

“I had no idea. I mean, she said she needed to explain things to me, and what happened but…I just…I panicked a little. We had sex before I left and I just…I forgot the condom and I didn’t want to stop and lost myself in her and now I just…I fucked up. Told her I needed time.”

“ _ Ben, jesus fucking christ, this is a really big deal okay. I don’t know if you realize how huge a deal this is. _ ”

“Yes! No…I just…I don’t know what to think or feel right now. It's so much emotion all at once…”

“ _ So much you feel nothing at all, you feel blank. _ ”

“Right.”

Hux knows. He always knows.

“ _ Listen Ben, there’s a reason she hasn’t told you before this. She wasn’t expecting you to come back, or to take responsibility. _ ”

“Maybe I want to…I’m scared. I don’t know what I want.”

“ _ Ben, let her explain herself to you first. It…it's the right thing to do. She’s probably worried senseless right now. Your world has been tilted right now but hers too you understand? _ ”

He hadn’t thought of it this way at all. Trust Hux to set him on the right path, always.

“I think I need a drink.”

“ _ Then have a drink, but then you need to see her. You need to have a heart to heart and then, if that works out, you should go and meet that baby. Meet your son _ .”

Hearing it in Hux’s voice only makes it more real.

“My son…I don’t know if I’m ready. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready.”

Hux sighs at the other end of the line.

“ _ No parent in the world is ever ready, Ben. You wing it as you go and hope to god you’ll do fine. But I know you will. You’ll do what’s best for everyone, whatever that is. _ ”

There’s a pause and then a still sleepy chuckle at the other end of the line.

“ _ Phasma is gonna be furious that you beat us to it… _ ”

The thought makes him smile.

It's a weak, watery smile, but it's something.

* * *

There’s a bar in the hotel lobby, a fancy place with moody lighting and a glass and chrome counter, muted jazz music. He sits on one of the tall stools and orders whiskey, a double measure that goes down fiery hot and leaves an earthy, mossy aftertaste on his tongue. He orders another right away but that one he sips slowly, letting it warm his entire body.

Lost in thought until a man sits beside him at the empty bar counter, orders a whiskey as well.

He looks at the man, older, white hair and fancy suit, neat little glasses.

“You look like you could use another drink…” the man mutters, asking the bartender for a second glass.

Ben thanks him quietly, and returns to contemplating the depths of his amber drink, how it shines warmly in the heavy crystal glass. An echo of her eyes that makes his stomach flip.

_ Does he have her eyes, our son?  _

The man beside him interrupts his swirling thoughts with a little cough.

“You know,” the old man starts, after a heady sip of his own tumbler, “there’s a few reasons that can push a man to drink that much whiskey in the middle of the afternoon but I really wonder what yours is…”

The offhanded tone makes him smile a little, that and the casual curiosity.

What has he got to lose, talking to a stranger.

“I found out I’m a father this morning.”

“Oh. Unexpectedly?”

“Yeah. The boy is four months old.”

The man nods, takes another sip of whiskey and Ben emulates the gesture, enjoying the shimmering burn in the pit of his stomach.

“The mother is suing you? Child support?”

He shakes his head, a little vigorously and the whiskey makes his head spin, blood rushing to his ears.

“No! No such thing…It's complicated. You see…the mother and I, we met last year in the summer, I was here on vacation.

“A fling?”

Ben smirks, remembering how easily they told each other of their love.

“Anything but a fling. I fell in love, we both did, utterly and completely. Never had I loved a woman like this before. We spent a little more than a month living in our little bubble. And then I left.”

“You left the country?”

“My life is in Los Angeles. My work, my friends…but I left my love here. My love and our baby. But I had no idea. I had no idea she was pregnant…”

“She hadn’t told you at all?” the man asks, surprised, and Ben feels a little ashamed.

“I was a coward, I felt like I’d abandoned her and I just…I buried myself in work, convinced myself it was better for us both not to think about it.”

“And in the meantime, she had a baby…”

Ben buries his face in his hands, takes a shuddery breath, wills himself not to cry but fails when a broad, warm hand settles on his shoulder.

“Hey…hey there don’t cry…You’ll be fine.”

“My father passed away two years ago, he’d have known what to do. My mother and I, we aren’t close…I want to work on our relationship but I can’t just barge in with ‘Hey mom I have a kid now please help’...” he murmurs and his voice feels so small.

“Talk to your lover. Find out what happened, be a man, take responsibility for your actions. You can work on your mother later. Be a father to your child, it's all you have to do now…Crying about it won’t be much help.” the man reasons, and of course its sound advice, the same Hux had given him.

He makes a note to tell Hux that he’s wiser than his years when he goes back to L.A. If he ever does.

* * *

“Come to my hotel.” he asks, softly in the receiver, and he feels a little sloshed from the whiskey but it was necessary to build up the courage to talk.

Sitting on the bed with his elbows on his knees and his hair sticking to his face.

“ _ Are you sure? _ ” she replies, “ _ You sound a little out of it _ .”

“I am,” he replies honestly, “I am but I need to see you. I need to talk to you, please…Please come to me.”

There’s a pause and a sigh.

“ _ Okay. Give me fifteen. _ ”

* * *

Her hair is longer.

It's the first thing he notices when she enters the room, how it grazes her shoulders in glossy chestnut curls, falls across her emerald and whiskey eyes.

Her mouth is still pink and full, pouty, and there’s a delicate dusting of freckles across her nose, more than the year before and he imagines her basking in the sun, laid out on a blanket in her backyard.

She’s wearing dark jeans and rubber boots, and a yellow rain jacket falling open on a white sweater and she is so beautiful and sylphlike and Ben feels like he could die if he doesn’t take her in his arms right this instant.

It's the easiest thing in the world to come close, so close and she doesn’t back away and her eyes get glazed as she steps in the circle of his arms.

And it's the easiest thing in the world to take her hips, fuller, softer, in his hands and gently pull her close and against his chest and to shove his nose in her hair. Soft, smelling of that organic rosemary shampoo she favours, and underneath that her neck. Lily of the valley and lilacs and the musk of skin underneath and she lets out a deliciously small, needy sound when his mouth closes on her skin.

An open mouthed kiss to that gentle flesh underneath her ear and she trembles.

Her hands tangle in his hair, cup the back of his neck urging him closer and he feels her yield completely, without a word.

They’re still in love.

How could they  _ not _ be?

They’re still so in love and it's ingrained in their hearts, their bodies, every single fibre of their beings. Loving her is like muscle memory, like playing a song by heart on his guitar.

It's something the body doesn’t forget.

“I missed you…I missed you  _ so _ much…” is all she murmurs before he takes her to the undone bed.

There is no artistry in their undressing, only urgency, hands underneath clothes finding skin and mouth on mouth that makes his head spin.

The sweetness of her lips is the same. He feels like he could never get enough of it and realizes how much he’s missed her.

Kissing her like he’s drowning. Kissing her for all the times he thought of her lips and couldn’t have her.

He was missing her more than he even knew, and he only realizes how much when she is spilled underneath him on his sheets, all glowy skin and hunger in her eyes.

Her breasts are fuller, dusky nipples that taste milk-sweet on his tongue, and the now curvaceous line of her hips draws his hands down.

Down her thighs, pushing them apart, fitting his shoulders underneath them and pressing his mouth against her wet cunt, another open-mouthed kiss that makes her back arch and her fingers claw at the sheets. Tangle in his hair.

He breathes her in, salty sweet, kisses and licks and devours. Only stops when she pleads, when her body is alive with shudders and his name moaned high and breathless, echoes off the walls and even then he is relentless.

Reckless. Pushing her thighs up his ribcage and holding her up as he sinks deep into her with a groan.

“I love you…” he moans into her mouth and means every syllable of it.

It doesn’t take him much.

He’s so pent up, wound so tight and he loves her so, so fucking much.

Her second orgasm makes him tumble over the edge crying wordlessly, spilling white hot between her legs and the aftermath is sloppy kisses and harsh breath and for a second disbelieving, euphoric laughter.

“I love you… _mon amour_ …” she murmurs in the hair above his ear, over and over again, her arms tight around his neck.

She is here. She is here and he still loves her, and she him.

It's a dizzying thought.

He comes off his high waking up with his head wedged underneath her chin, her small hands tracing patterns down the back of his neck. Fiddling with the chain of the citrine necklace. Fitting so right on top of her, cradled between her thighs.

Their bodies still fit perfectly.

“I never took it off…” he murmurs and she chuckles.

“That makes me happy. Really happy.” she replies, kissing his temple.

His arms wrap around her waist, wedged between her body and the soft bed.

“What did you call him?” he asks, mouthing the question against her jaw and her hands pause for half a second.

“Milo. Milo Solo.”

It's a pretty name and warmth buds in his belly at the surname.

“He has my name too you know, he’s Milo Niima-Solo…but I…” her fingers twirl the soft hair at the nape of his neck, “I thought he should carry your name.”

He holds her closer.

“Is he healthy? What kind of a baby is he?”

He feels rather than sees her smile, her jaw moving.

“He’s very healthy, and such a good baby…he’s very quiet. He’s beautiful…”

There’s a long pause, the sound of rain on the window panes.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

She breathes deeply, sits up in the sheets and he follows her movement, sits across from her in the mess of blankets.

She’s so beautiful like this.

He hadn’t forgotten her beauty but it was hazy in his mind and he’s reminded with every delicate movement of her body, the emotions across her features.

“I loved you too much, I was selfish.” she replies, “I just…” she gathers her hands in her bare lap, fiddling with the silver band around her middle finger.

“I wanted to keep a piece of you with me. It's selfish. It's so selfish I know. I should’ve asked. But I didn’t want you to feel forced to come back you understand? I thought of your career…I didn’t want you to feel obliged to put your career on hold for my selfishness.”

Her voice breaks on the last words and he reaches for her but she holds him away with one hand on his chest, her eyes overspilling.

“I couldn’t…I just couldn’t let you go…I love you.”

He drags her into his lap and she relents, breathing deep and he wipes at her eyes with his fingers only to realize that his eyes are wet too.

“I’m sorry…” she mumbles in his neck, “I’m so sorry…”

“I’m sorry too…I’m sorry you thought you had to go through it alone…I’m sorry I didn’t call. I should’ve held on to you and instead I ran away from heartbreak and buried myself in work and I just…I’m sorry too.”

They both cry for a while, and it feels good to let go, to apologize, come clean.

In the shower he holds her close, lathers her hair and the back of her neck and their easily regained intimacy is familiar and delicious. Her breasts are swollen, leaking milk when he cups them in his hands, mesmerized by the miracle of her body. 

"I need to leave, our son will be hungry..."

It takes every drop of self control in his body to let her go.

“Would you like to meet him?” she asks, stepping up to the bed fully dressed to stand between his knees.

He puts his hands on her hips. 

“He’s mine too.” he replies.

She smiles, looking gorgeous from underneath the soft curtain of her hair, white teeth and plush lips.

“He is. He is yours without a doubt.”

“I want to meet him.”

She leans down for a sweet kiss.

“Come to the coffee shop tomorrow. If you want. Ben, I just…I want to put it out there that I’m not expecting anything from you. Nothing at all.”

“My love…”

“It was my decision to have him. I made that decision on my own and as such, I chose to take full responsibility for him. I’ll never ask you for help, or money…”

“Rey…love, listen.”

He takes her hands in his, kisses her knuckles.

“I made him with you. And I know that it's late for me to take responsibility, and that I wasn’t there when you needed me, but I want to be involved in his life. I really want to.”

“I would like it if you did. I would like it a lot.”

“Let's do this together, okay? Start over, do things right.”

She smiles, softly, kisses his upper lip before pulling away, adjusting her rain jacket.

“Together.” she agrees.

It takes him hours to fall asleep.

Turning left and right in sheets that smell of lily of the valley and rosemary shampoo, and their tangled bodies.

The bed already feels too big without her in it.

He’s too eager, scared, elated. But when he does it’s with a peace of mind he hasn’t had in months.

* * *

The coffee shop hasn’t changed at all.

It's still all warm wood and colours, sunlight bright through the bay windows.

The scent of roasted coffee beans and chocolate scones.

He nods to the employee behind the counter, a girl he doesn’t know yet but with a friendly smile.

She’s sitting in the back, on one of the couches, and her hair is wildly curled, catching the sunlight and she waves at him with one hand, because the other is busy holding a baby to her chest.

So small, in yellow and white striped footed pyjamas, the smallest of hands resting on the curve of her breast.

He pauses mid-step, heart racing.

This moment, it changes everything.

It will change his life forever and for a second he thinks he’s afraid but he takes a step, and another, until he stands a foot away and there’s no backing down.

Her smile is radiant, and she gently pries the baby away from her breast and he lets out a sleepy whine.

“I’m done feeding him, come sit with me.”

He takes a slow breath, and moves, sits beside her on the cream couch, close enough for their sides to touch.

Close enough for him to lay eyes on the baby he made with her.

And fall in love. Again.

Fall in love with the soft, delicate bow of an upper lip, and a thick fan of lashes on plump, rosy cheeks, a tiny little nose.

Wispy dark curls.

“Do you want to hold him?” she asks, softly, and he manages a nod because words fail him.

Sleep heavy in his arms and yet so small, cradling his head in his hand easily.

The baby blinks softly, looks at him through a haze of sleep, his eyes deep set, just like his own, but fairer, light amber.

Like hers.

His heart throbs.

“Oh…Hello. Hello Milo...” he whispers and the baby lets out a gummy yawn.

He and Rey, they yawn the same way and he lets out a disbelieving chuckle at the sight.

It sinks in that he’s a father and his eyes overflow a little.

He never thought for a second that he would be any qualified for the responsibility it entails but just seeing his son blink and yawn and slowly fall right back to sleep in the crook of his arm is like watching all of his fears melt away.

His reality is changed forever, and this feels bigger than anything he’s ever done.

It's bigger than the music, bigger than himself and he’s never felt more sure about something in his life.

He’s elated.

“He’s…He’s so gorgeous, good god…” he murmurs, gently tracing the curve of a soft jaw.

“He is. He’s gorgeous. And he’s ours…” she replies, leaning against him, head on his shoulder.

“He’s ours. And we’ll raise him together.” he replies, reaching for her hand with his free one, tangling their fingers.

Together.

It won’t be easy, he knows, and there will be sacrifices and hard choices ahead.

And yet, for the first time in his life, watching his son sleep in his arms, he feels completely unafraid.

A fresh start. Together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope y'all liked this, seriously being quarantined is great for my muse hahaha I can't stop writing...
> 
> I'm gonna try not to be so angsty next time, who wants a meet-cute at the beach AU? Or like exes meeting at a party AU? Let me know in comments pls I need the support its really lonely in my house this week (my partner isn't quarantined and my cats haven't learned human language yet) -_-


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